The 55-5 - and uncommon leadership skill

(reading time: 5 minutes)

A lot of people hate tension. They dislike or cannot properly engage in constructive conflict. We don't like to be with any form of pain, fear or feeling we dislike. You enjoy boredom? I doubt you do. You enjoy seeing a loved one in pain? We all don't.?

It's difficult to give space. To hold space. It's difficult to hold back your opinion or advice. Especially when people are around. It's difficult to stop thinking for a moment. Especially when working on something that bothers you.?

How good are you at holding back when in a business meeting? At not shining or demonstrating your competence? At not talking? At just being there and letting things unfold a bit?

How good are you at holding tension?

A different problem

Einstein once said that, if he had 60 minutes to find a solution, he would spend 55 minutes on identifying the actual problem - and 5 minutes to solve it. That's 55 minutes of potential tension. Think about an important?meeting you had recently: what % of time did you spend on digging deep? Most of us go into solution-finding mode immediately. And we mean well. But we might work on absolutely the wrong problem.

When I coach leaders and teams, the problem that most of them arrive with is rarely the one that we actually work on. There is mostly something underneath, something that is deeper than what appears on the surface.?

Einstein's Formula: 55-5. A formula to uncover.?

We don't want to work on the wrong problem. It's inefficient and a waste of time. It doesn't get us anywhere. So what we need first, is discovery.?

1. The First "5": Artful questions.

Most people asked closed-end questions all the time. A closed-end question is one you can answer with yes or no. I have seen big shifts when leaders started to switch from closed-end questions to open-ended ones. Open-ended questions start with "what", "how" and sometimes "why" (why-questions can be tricky, though).

For most, it feels totally unnatural. It might be that closed-end questions give people more sense of security. The answers seem to be more easy to handle. They can categorize things. In contrast, open-ended questions open up the way for discovery, for uncertainty, for not-knowing, for some form of potential tension.?

Artful questions are related to curiosity. Curiosity is the perfect antidote to pre-mature judgement. Judgement and curiosity cannot exist at the same time.?

Artful questions are the first step.?

2. The Second "5": Active listening.

After asking the question, you'd better start listening. Yeah. Chances are you've heard of it before. It actually doesn't come naturally. And people who think they have a natural gift for it, mostly lack a certain self-awareness. I only discovered in my first coach training what true listening actually is.?

Listening feels slow, it feels tedious, it's so not action-oriented. It can make some people nervous... you hear opinions you might not want to hear, perspectives that make things more complicated, information that might force you to change your mind. Even worse, other people might know more than you or come up with a better solution.

Listening is so powerful because it corresponds to the much-needed discovery rather than jumping to conclusions and moving too quickly. And besides that, it makes people feel good.?

Clients who come to me and want to improve their communications skills, always start with not learning how to talk, but learning how to zip it and not drift off. In the words of Marshall Goldsmith:

"When you find yourself mentally or literally drumming your fingers while someone else is talking, stop the drumming."

Listening is the second step.?

3. The third "5": Paraphrasing?

Paraphrasing means you summarize what you heard in your own words and give them back. This allows you to check whether you understand what was said, and also, whether what was said was actually meant.?

Jordan Peterson mentions this fascinating point is a recent post:

"Carl Rogers’s rule was, when you are listening to someone, do not assume that either you or they know what they are talking about or what they are going to say. Because people think by talking, so you have to give them a chance to get it all out before you jump on it because they might change their own mind in midstream. That is important. Let them formulate the problem before you jump in with the criticism.?

But then the next thing is – and I really love this and I think it is really useful – that once the person has laid out their story, you get to say, “This is what I heard you say. Do you agree with my formulation?"

Paraphrasing brings the arc to a close. And obviously, it allows for more arcs to be opened again. This is what discovery is about.

4. The hyphen?

The hyphen is related to time.?Time for discovery. Sometimes, also for chaos. It is the time required for and between questions and listening. It is the often unstructured process of finding out what is really going on.

In that sense, the hyphen is related to patience. In Gary Vee's words:

"Similar to kindness, patience is another trait that people don’t immediately think of when they think of business success — especially for the super-ambitious. They want the wins and they want them now, so patience can feel counterintuitive to the big goals they’ve set for themselves."?

The 55-5

Artful questions. Active listening. Paraphrasing.?

These are the first steps in successful problem solving. They allow for a thoughtful and often missing phase of discovery that see what is truly going on. This, in turn, allows to make more effective and better decisions. And if we believe Einstein - a very smart cookie as most of us would say - it might make some solutions obvious.?

But maybe even more importantly, the 55-5 is the first step towards proper, deep and human conversations. It makes people feel heard and seen, it shows interest and respect, and it creates connection and bonding.?

An uncommon skill that combines both results and relationships. The 55-5.